“Oh! It was a paper connected with her divorce suit?”
“Certainly. What did you think— Hey! I’m dumb and so are you! It was there anyway — that WD! Two years ago her name wasn’t Wynne Cowles, it was Wynne Durocher! She not only wrote it, she signed it!”
“I was right, Ty. Mountain cat.”
“Yeah, you were right.”
“And that paper she wrote was found under Dad’s body. So she was — she knows something about it.”
“Not necessarily. You’ve got to go at it logically.” Ty screwed up his lips. “With what Hurley says about the writing, plus the WD at the bottom, we can regard it as settled that she wrote it. Okay. Then either she dropped it in the cabin herself and she did the murder, or it was dropped there by someone else and she knows who she gave it to. That’s easy. Ask her when she wrote that paper and what she did with it. But it’s not so easy if she dropped it in the cabin herself. In that case, since the paper is gone, there’s no evidence or proof of anything and it would be foolish to put her on her guard by asking her about it. So maybe that’s not the thing to do. Look here, Del. This is no time to hide anything, no matter what it is. Do you know of any motive Wynne Cowles might have had for killing your father?”
“No.” Delia looked straight at him. “And I wouldn’t hide anything, Ty. Not now. It’s not a question of vengeance, it’s stopping this... all this horrible... and Clara down there alone...” She swallowed hard. “And I don’t think Wynne Cowles killed Dad. She had no reason to. She wouldn’t do that anyway, I mean take that money from him. I don’t like her, but that isn’t a thing she would do. We must ask her why she wrote that on paper and who she gave it to. Somebody must.”
“It would be a big mistake if she had a hand in it. Maybe she didn’t do it herself but she was behind it.”
“I don’t think so.”
Ty gazed at Hurley. “Did you ever get a stake from Wynne Cowles?”
“Never heard of her.”
“The woman that bought the Broken Circle ranch.”
“Oh. Heard of her but never saw her.”
“Or did you ever get a stake from Paul Emery?”
“Hell no. That little squirt.”
Ty sat and frowned. “Well,” he said finally, “I can go and ask her. It seems pretty damned naïve. Of course there’s another alternative we might want to consider, we can turn it all over to the county attorney. He has resources—”
Hurley growled. “You mean that Baker? And let him lock me up because I told him I can’t read? I swear to God if I get locked up again—”
Ty waved it aside. “It’s no good anyway. Baker’s so deep in the politics of it he couldn’t see straight even if he wanted to, and there’s no assurance he wants to. We can’t trust any of them. The sheriff is only Baker’s office boy. Frank Phelan is Lem Sammis’s man and this may touch Sammis.” He gathered the papers from the table, including the envelope addressed by Wynne Cowles, crammed them into his pocket, abruptly shoved his chair back, and got up. “All right. I’ll go and see her.”
Delia arose. “I’ll go along.”
“No, Del. Please. She’s more apt to spill it to one than to two. I ought to go alone. And you ought to be here if Clara comes home. Another thing. What are you going to do, Hurley?”
“Me?” The prospector grunted. “Go to my room and sit. I’d rather do that than tramp these derned sidewalks.”
“Do you realize you’re a target?”
“Target for what?”
“For a bullet. Jackson was in possession of evidence against the murderer of Brand, and he was killed and it was taken: Rufus Toale — oh, you don’t know about that. But Toale was killed for the same reason. You are now the only living person who can offer a scrap of evidence against Brand’s murderer. You saw that paper and what was written on it. Chances are the murderer knows it. Who knows that you told the county attorney you can’t read?”
“Search me.”
“Well. I’m just saying that maybe you’d like to go on living.”
Hurley grunted again. “I’ve been pretty successful at it for close on seventy years.”
“I think you ought to stay here. Inside this house. There’s a spare bed upstairs.”
“Me?” Hurley’s squint widened. “In this kind of an outfit?” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “No, I guess I’ll do better if I mosey along to my room.”
“My car’s outside. I’ll drive you.”
“Nope.” He was positive. “Rather walk.”
“Suit yourself. Burro is right.” Ty turned to Delia. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. It takes forty minutes to get out there, if I don’t find her in town. I’ll come straight here.”
“Do.” She touched his arm. “Ty? Please...”
“I know, Del. I’ll do my very best.”
He kissed her. A blush of embarrassment showed on Squint Hurley’s cheek, faint but perceptible on his weathered old skin, as he hastily turned his face away.
Chapter 17
Lem Sammis opened the door of the two-storied frame building and entered. Five paces inside he stopped and stood peering around at the confusing array of animals and birds — deer, grouse, eagles, chipmunks, jack rabbits, the elk, the bear, the cougar. But nothing alive was there, so he tramped to the rear behind the partition and found what he was looking for. “I sent for you three times,” he growled.
Quinby Pellett, seated at the workbench, looked up. His graying hair looked dustier than ever, and the hump of his stooped shoulders was almost a semicircle. “I don’t give a damn,” he declared calmly, “if you sent a thousand.”
Sammis approached him, glaring. “Look here, Quin. You’ve always been independent. That’s all right. But if we’re working the same claim, and in this case we are, there’s no help in this kind of an attitude. Baker’s got your niece shut up in the courthouse right now. He won’t hang any murder on me or mine or you or yours, but it looks like he can raise a big stink before I can stop him. He’s digging into your sister’s life and maybe her death, too. And my daughter. And Charlie and Dan. He’s got Clara there now. He had you for two hours this morning. I want to know what you told him.”
“I told him nothing.”
“You were there two hours.”
“I told him nothing.”
“Frank Phelan was there part of the time. I’ve had a talk with Frank.”
Pellett put down his scraping knife. “If Frank said I told Baker anything about your family or my family that neither you nor I would want him to know, or want anyone else to know, he lied. The reason I didn’t come to see you was because I don’t want to talk about it even to you. There’s too much talk already.”
“There’s too much shooting, too, Quin.”
“I know damn well there is.”
“You’re not telling Baker about Amy and Dan or anything?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to?”
“No.”
“That’s straight?”
“That’s straight.” Sammis stood gazing at him for ten seconds, then turned and went.
Chief of Police Frank Phelan hissed in rage, leaving his desk to advance threateningly on the trio of city detectives in plain clothes. “Suffering snakes! Is it a button in a boulder I asked you to find? No! I want you to find the Governor of the State of Wyoming! Goddamn it, shall I draw a picture of him for you? I don’t care where he’s hid or who hid him! Find him! Lem Sammis wants him and Ollie Nevins wants him! Shall I print it out for you, you half-witted apes? Get out of here before I boil you down for boot grease!” They clattered out.